The present invention is directed to a method and system for providing the communication of messages of various protocols over a communications network. More particularly, the present invention provides a method and a system by which a message coding/decoding technique can be defined arbitrarily by, for example, one of two communicating parties and the other party can receive the message by using a retrieved copy of the coding/decoding technique.
Messaging has become increasingly important for individuals and for business entities. In much the same way that traditional communication services have been carried on separate infrastructures, messaging capabilities are being offered on different service platforms using different interfaces depending on the message media. As an example, voice messaging is offered by many telecommunication companies. Voice messaging is often provided using a network resident answering machine that can be remotely operated using a telephone. At the same time that voice messaging has continued to be heavily used, there has been growing interest in electronic mail (e-mail) services by which electronic messages can be transmitted between parties using a data network such as the Internet. Customers would be better served if these various communication services which have been provided on separate infrastructures could somehow be integrated upon the same infrastructure. Specifically, it would be beneficial if integration of user access to e-mail and voice mail could be achieved by unifying messages with respect to all known media and also by infringing service specific message coding and decoding.
Another shortcoming extant in present messaging architectures is that a messaging technique to be employed between two parties is limited by the player/receiver capabilities of the respective end terminals. Thus, a given receiver can only receive content of known media and format. Before viewing or playing published content, a receiver must know the media of the content and the format of the content and must provision its own end device, (for example, a work station), with an appropriate program that is capable of playing the content. The receiver also must perform a mapping to enable a content browser to execute this program on seeing the identified content type. Thus, a receiver is limited in its ability to play a message content and cannot receive a message of unknown type. This limitation means that the sender and the receiver must negotiate or coordinate to assure that a transmitted message can be accurately received by the intended recipient. Furthermore, this problem is more acute where the transmitter desires to use some new message type, whereby the receiver must be provided with a player that is adapted to deal with this new message type.